The Land Baron's Sun

The Land Baron's Sun chronicles through poetry the life of Ly Loc, the son of an affluent Vietnamese landowner who was thought to own the sun by his children, wives, servants, and tenant farmers because it had always shone favorably upon him. Ly Loc lived just as prosperous a life, one in which he rose to the rank of major commander for the South Vietnamese Army and was attended to by seven wives who bore him twenty-seven children. On April 20, 1975, the day Saigon fell, fate took a cruel turn for Ly Loc, as the sun, a symbol of the divine love, refused to shine. His capture by the Viet Cong and incarceration in a reeducation camp marked only the beginning of the sun recouping all that it had bestowed upon Ly Loc and his family. Smith's poems delve into Ly Loc's childhood and adult life, his years spent in the reeducation camp, and his wives' and children's fate both in Vietnam and, for those who were fortunate enough to escape, in America. The poems expose the beauty and freedom of the human spirit and the lushness that was once Vietnam; likewise, they show the undeniable oppression of a country divided on itself and the struggle its people went through to survive.